The Weatherhouse

by Nan Shepherd

  Mrs Falconer answered humbly, with her grieved eyes on the girl’s face, ‘I can’t do that, Stella. I don’t know if there is a God.’

  Stella stared and cried, ‘Well, you’re a straight one. I like you for that.’

  Perhaps I have done wrong, she thought, saying that to the child. But no, nothing could be wrong that strove to establish truth. But I was striving to establish truth by exposing Louie. Life was past belief, complicated, huge. The God she had served judged all men by their motives. She had a glimpse now of a darker, more terrible God who judged results. How could it be enough to mean well? One came afterwards to repudiate one’s own motives, to see that one was responsible in spite of them. One’s true self, which one had not known, had worked. Surely if there was a God, it was one’s real self that He judged.

  Her mind turned to Louie. They had shut Uplands and gone away for a time. ‘She’ll get a man and not come back at all—see if she doesn’t,’ Theresa said. That was the kind of cruel thing that was said of her on all hands now. ‘And I delivered her up to it,’ thought Ellen. For years to come she was to see Louie degenerate because people knew her for what she was. But did they? She came to her deepest understanding of Louie when she saw that she was like herself, and built rashly on a foundation of her own imaginings. How could people understand that? ‘But I understand. I know how it had all seemed to her.’ She dwelt on the resemblance till she could hardly distinguish between herself and Louie. ‘And people needn’t have known her false pretences if it hadn’t been for my false pretences.’ She remembered Garry’s tale of his delirium in the shell-hole. ‘I thrust her in, I am rescuing myself.’

  ‘Ah,’ she thought, ‘here is one person outside myself whom I really know.’ And she went to seek Louie.

  But some years had passed by then, and Mrs Falconer had made other attempts at knowing people.

  It took her many months after the failure of her first grandiose designs to face again her need for entering other lives, and many months more to find a way.

  One day she came home from town and said abruptly, ‘Well, I’m going to help at the Working Girls’ Guild. Tuesday evenings.’

  ‘I’m sure it’s a good thing, poor lassies!’ said Paradise, who saw nothing incongruous in Ellen, with her old-fashioned dress and ideas, moving in the generation of post-war factory girls.

  Nor did Ellen see her incongruity. Tuesday evenings were her excitement. The rude, boisterous life, she met provided an experience. She came home too excited to sleep. ‘Now, soon, I shall win the confidence of these girls. They will tell me all their lives, their secret thoughts.’

  She did not guess that she was herself a problem to the leaders of the Guild. The girls made merciless fun of the hat that perched high above greying coils of hair, of the old-fashioned full skirt and the leather belt drawn tight to a meagre waist; still more of the smile with which she followed them about and the queer questions she put. And she could not do things. Each worker was armed with knowledge: one could guide the dancing, one tell stories, one teach gymnastics or dressmaking. Mrs Falconer had no asset.

  ‘She’s such a good soul,’ the workers said, ‘you don’t want to hurt her, but really—she’s in the way.’

  ‘Oh, let her keep coming. She enjoys it. There’s always something she can do.’

  ‘The girls like her, though they laugh.’

  ‘But she shouldn’t be so tall. Old women oughtn’t to be tall. They’re not so lovable.’

  They began to give her hints. She listened humbly, while students and youthful graduates told her how modern psychology decreed that working-girls should be treated. She took her lessons home and brooded over them.

  For two years the centre of her life lay here. One evening she found Stella Ferguson in the Guild room, all staring eyes and open ears.

  ‘I’m in a shop,’ said Stella contemptuously. ‘I’m fourteen. Ay, in the town: I wasn’t going to your country shoppies, do you suppose.’

  Some weeks later a bold girl burst indignantly up to the leader. ‘Look here, I’m not going to have that old-clothes wife prying into my affairs. Cheek, I call it.’ She let fly a stream of ugly oaths.

  The leader was compelled to tell Mrs Falconer that she had been unwise.

  ‘That girl, poor soul—her home and people don’t stand inquiring into. She’s ashamed. One has to go very warily.’ Mrs Falconer understood after the conversation she had that evening with the leader that she had been of no great use at the Guild.

  ‘You have been of great use to me,’ she said humbly. ‘I have been happy—but I won’t come again.’

  ‘Oh, please do! Come back sometimes and see us.’

  Ruthless to herself, Mrs Falconer saw that her eagerness to know the intimacies of the girls’ lives had been for her own sake, to quicken her life.

  The following Tuesday she answered Theresa’s, ‘Isn’t it time you were away?’ with a proud plain ‘I’m not going back. They think I’m too old for that work.’

  The shy, baffled soul, entering upon her quest too late, with no key to open other lives, would take no consolation from deceit. It was about this period that she began to brood on Louie Morgan; and one day, though the two women had not spoken since the night of the concert, she set out to visit her.

  The door was opened by the Morgans’ servant, a middle-aged woman with sleeves pushed up to reveal enormous red elbows.

  ‘It’s Miss Louie you’re seekin’, nae the mistress?’

  She led Mrs Falconer to the door of a room, within which someone was speaking.

  ‘There’s company—I won’t go in.’

  ‘Ach, she’s just play-actin’, ben you go.’ The red-armed woman pushed Mrs Falconer in, but without announcing her, and shut the door.

  Mrs Falconer stood amazed.

  Louie held a teapot in her hand and was pouring tea. She moved with an elegant air around the table, filling cup after cup, and spoke to each guest in turn: but the guests were not there.

  On the empty chairs Mrs Falconer seemed to see dark, menacing figures, guests with suave manners that covered a deadly leer.

  A hot fervour took possession of her.

  She cried aloud, ‘Mr Facing-Both-Ways, Mr Two-Tongues, My Lady Feigning.’

  Louie set the teapot askew upon a chair in her astonishment.

  ‘Oh, go away—my mother is out—what are you wanting?’ Her eyes glared, but in a moment she recovered herself and began to posture.

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you announced, Mrs Falconer. Do sit down.’ She waved her hand at the cups of tea. ‘I was expecting guests. When I heard the bell ring I thought they had arrived, and I was pouring the tea to be ready. Do have some.’ She thrust a cup into Mrs Falconer’s hand. The tea was already cold.

  She was extravagantly dressed, but the lace at her throat was torn and her fingernails were dirty. Her face, oppressed by powder, and her hair, which had straggled beyond its cut, gave her an air of sloven tawdriness; and she continued to posture and trill.

  Mrs Falconer put the cup down and said, in a harsh, loud voice, ‘I don’t like the guests at your party. Don’t pretend not to understand me,’ she continued. ‘I don’t like your party, and I don’t like the guests you entertain. You are entertaining ghosts, demons, delusions, snares, principalities and powers. You are entertaining your own destruction.’

  The voice hardly seemed her own, but she could not check it. It poured on without intermission, crying a thousand things that she had brooded over, but to which she had given no language.

  ‘Truth, truth—it must be truth. You mustn’t compromise. If you would save yourself alive there must be no dallying with the false deities of the imagination. Things as they are. People as they are.’

  Scarlet spots burned on Louie’s face and throat. She began to retaliate, a fierce and insolent screaming.

  ‘You—you—don’t you know that you are to blame? You gave me away. He never meant them to know. It was you. And then you come and talk!’
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  ‘Yes, yes, I am to blame. We are both to blame. We must help each other to find the truth. No more compromise. But perhaps it’s easier for the old not to compromise with life: the young have so much longer to live. But you mustn’t let yourself give in. Let me help you—’

  ‘You fool!’ burst from Louie’s lips. ‘I never want to see your face again.’

  Mrs Falconer drew back in paralysed affright.

  At that moment the big-boned servant came in to the room carrying a tray.

  ‘Take your tea, the pair of you,’ she said, and thrust the tray carelessly among the cups of cold tea upon the table. But Louie, ignoring the interruption, screamed miserably on.

  Mrs Morgan’s step and voice were heard.

  ‘Not a word,’ cried Louie. ‘Not a word before my mother. Have you no sense of decency?’

  Her whole demeanour altered. She laughed and chattered, a wild roguery possessed her. Gleams of graciousness returned.

  Mrs Morgan accompanied Mrs Falconer to the door.

  ‘Dear Louie! You must excuse her. She’s so excitable. So natural in the circumstances. He may be arriving any day. Such a delightful man! We met him when we were staying in the south. Of course, we are not saying much, but you may be sure that I shall give my consent.’

  The one elderly lady smiled benignly up into the face of the other; and Mrs Falconer, almost without her will, said softly, ‘Yes, yes,’ and patted the hand her hostess gave her in farewell. The round, pleased little lady smiled up again at her gaunt, tall guest.

  ‘We mothers,’ she murmured.

  But Mrs Falconer went out on to the road shaking her head and muttering hard. All that evening she could not hold her peace. Words and broken sentences spurted from her lips, until at last Theresa said, ‘What ails you, Nell, at all? If you want to say something, speak it out’; and Ellen, as though she had waited for the bidding, rose and spoke.

  ‘I’ve been frightened of you all my life, Tris—I’m not frightened any longer. But I’ve seen a thing this afternoon that’s frightened me. There’s nothing to fear in all the world but deceit. Nothing at all. And I’ve seen it, I’ve seen it. I’ve seen a deluded woman—and he wakened her up from her idle dreams as he wakened me—despising truth, feeding herself on error, pouring her cups of devil’s tea—’

  ‘Where were you at all this afternoon?’

  ‘At the Morgans’.’

  ‘Oh, it’s Louie you’re meaning. Deluded, you may say. Their woman Eppie’ll tell you the things she does.’ Theresa prepared to expatiate, but Ellen cried, ‘It’s myself I mean. It was myself I saw. That’s what I saw—myself. I’m inside Louie, and I’m a part of her deceit. God’s in her, the God I can’t get at—’

  ‘You’re raving, lass,’ said Paradise. ‘Feel her hands, Tris, she’s in a fever.’

  ‘—and for all my life to come I must proclaim it, that God’s shut up inside us all and can’t get out. I pushed her in, you see—’

  Mrs Craigmyle, half rising in her corner, looked with sudden apprehension at her daughter. Ellen’s face was chiselled now, its untouched innocence was gone; and as, for a moment, her mask of careless mockery let fall, Mrs Craigmyle bent forward to look at the raving woman, the old resemblance between the faces became strangely clear, both thin, both shapely and intent, and each significant.

  Mrs Falconer’s illness, which was tedious and severe, gave rise among the neighbours to such comments as: ‘She’s breaking up.’ ‘The poor old soul; they say she’s terrible mixed.’ ‘Auld age doesna come its lane, but better the body to go than the mind, say I.’

  Ellen’s body in time recovered; but a change had come upon her. Nothing was in her head but the horror and sharpness of truth. She talked of it fiercely and incessantly to any who would listen. Her humble demeanour altered to one of angry pride. She could go to school to life no longer, since what she had learned was already more than her wits could rightly stand.

  When her strength had returned she would slip away on Tuesday evenings and visit the Guild.

  ‘Truth, my dear—no, no, I don’t mean not telling lies. It’s big, it’s all one’s life, all everyone’s life, and no one finds it.’

  They saw very quickly that all she wanted was to talk, and let her be. One evening when she seemed more unsure of herself than usual they hesitated to let her go out upon the street alone; but one girl cried, ‘I’ll take her home, the craitur. She’s real like my old granny. Many’s the time I’ve taken her along. Come on, granny.’

  They went off arm in arm.

  The next time Mrs Falconer appeared in the Guild room Miss Theresa arrived on her heels, breathless, and apologised with many words; but paused, going, at the door, to indulge her natural inquisitiveness; and Mrs Falconer, stumbling back across the room, her head thrust forward, as she had run across the garden to intercept Garry Forbes, caught hand after hand that was held eagerly towards her, and patting them softly between her own, said, ‘A little dottled, my dears, a little dottled. You must just forgive me.’

  ‘Kate,’ said Miss Theresa, ‘you mustn’t give your mother money. She wanders away.’

  Kate gave her aunt a shrewd, considering look.

  ‘I suppose she would wander away whether or not, Aunt Tris, and if she does, surely it’s better she should have money to fetch her back. In any case, she’s not so dottled as you would make out. A fixed idea, if you like, that’s all.’

  And when Mrs Falconer pulled her daughter aside, Kate gave her, smiling, what she wished.

  At times a great bodily weakness came on her. She lay wasted and shrunken, very still, her face no bigger than an ailing child’s, but the eyes shone out from it with full intelligence. She spoke seldom, unless her mother were in the room, when beckoning the old lady near, she would speak in a strong, firm voice.

  On one such occasion she said, ‘There is a God, but I have seen not even the shadow of His passing by. When one has found the secret being of all that lives, that is God. I have hardly begun, I have hardly begun. My life is ending and I have not seen Him.’

  Another day she pondered, ‘Am I old? I felt so young. I thought I had endless life ahead, and I have not. They say that I am old. I didn’t believe that I could die, but I suppose I shall.’

  Mrs Craigmyle answered, ‘There’s no need to get old, my lass. A body can be just the age he wants. For shame on you, get up, get up.’

  Later, her strength come again, she would rise and stalk, erect and gaunt, upon the moor; or, gathering flowers, bring them to Paradise to name. ‘That’s tormentil,’ said Paradise; or milkwort it might be, or eyebright; and Paradise would name them to her day after day. Or drawing her chair close in beside her mother’s, she would talk with a strange wild clatter, by the hour.

  In the last years of her life Mrs Craigmyle ceased to torment her second daughter, and when she died the old lady would not be consoled.

  The Epilogue

  Lindsay came by chance to the Weatherhouse on the day that Mrs Falconer died.

  ‘Well!” thought Theresa. ‘Nine years married and three bairns. Could one believe it?’ She looked again at Lindsay’s girlish figure and the happy candour of her eyes, veiled for the moment under a profound pity.

  ‘Cousin Ellen,’ Lindsay was thinking. ‘Dying.’ Death was remote and terrible. She had seen no one die; but there flashed back into her mind the recollection of a dead bird she had held against her bosom in this very room. ‘I showed it to Cousin Ellen,’ she remembered. ‘That russet patch beneath its wing.’ It comforted her vaguely that she had shown the beauty of the bird she mourned to the woman who was dying now. ‘I didn’t love her very much,’ she thought. ‘She interfered.’ The gaunt, grey face upon the pillow horrified the watcher. ‘I showed her my bird,’ she thought, ‘I showed her my bird.’

  Mrs Falconer lay dazed and blank. ‘Jumps out of bed!’ thought Lindsay. ‘She looks as if she could not move a foot.’ But Theresa had explained that they had brought her down from her own high r
oom. She couldn’t be left alone a minute—would be up and running on her naked feet to the window. ‘We couldn’t be trotting up and down that stairs all day.’

  ‘No, indeed,’ said Lindsay, in her soft, commiserating voice. ‘With Cousin Annie so lame, too—you must have so much to do.’

  ‘Oh, not so much more,’ answered Theresa tartly. ‘If it’s in the house you’re meaning, all that Nell did in the house was neither here nor there. She’s been about as much use this long while back as her mother, and less. Stravaigin’ about on that moor at all hours. “You would need a season ticket, that’s what you would need,” I said to her. And muttering away to herself, you never heard! As wild as Bawbie Pater son herself, and she’s a byword, though she be your husband’s aunt, my dear.’

  ‘Oh, you needn’t tell me,’ said Lindsay, with a glimmer. ‘We can’t stay in the house now. It’s unspeakable. She’s beyond everything.’

  ‘It’s a marvel to me that you ever stayed.’

  ‘Indeed, yes,’ said Miss Annie. ‘“You must have taken her up wrong,” I said to Tris, that first time after the war, when she came in and told us that Francie’s wife had seen you arrive. And never to send us a line.’

  ‘But that was Garry all over,’ said Lindsay, laughing again. ‘Up and away when he took it into his head. I couldn’t have sent you a line.’

  ‘Well,’ thought Miss Theresa comfortably, ‘I wouldn’t be married to a man that’s the byword and laughing stock of the place.’ And she looked again at Lindsay with amazement. Happy—there was no doubt of it. Now who could have foretold that such a marriage would turn out well? ‘It’s these modern styles that does it,’ she said aloud, with a nip to her tone, surveying the girl’s lissome grace.

  ‘I’m glad to see you don’t show off your knees, Lindsay,’ said Miss Annie.

  Miss Annie had said, when the preparations for Lindsay’s wedding were toward, ‘I would like to hear that she was getting a good white wincey gown, but I don’t suppose she will.’